UPDATE: On tax measures, ‘yes’ means ‘no’

In the confusing world of special elections, the group that gathered enough signatures to challenge Legislature-passed tax increases is asking you to vote “no” on those measures. Opponents of the measures want you to vote “yes.”

Those measures aren’t straightforward initiatives or referrals. They’re referendums, or referenda, depending on your comfort with Latin. That means voters will give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the tax bills passed during the last legislative session.

So it’s “yes” to validate the Legislature’s corporate and personal tax incresases and “no” to reject it and find a new way to plug a budget gap.

The two measures qualified for the ballot, the Oregon Secretary of State’s office announced Thursday, and will appear on a Jan. 26, 2010 special ballot.

Measure supporters turned in far more than the roughly 55,000 signatures they needed to qualify for the ballot, said Don Hamilton, spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office.

“They filed more than twice as many,” Hamilton said. “It’s unusually high for a statewide ballot measure.”

Both had around 99,000 valid signatures, he said. The referendums will are known as Measure 66 and Measure 67.

The Legislature raised corporate and personal income taxes and changed the corporate tax structure in its regular 2009 session. Some business groups had supported the increases, but opposed making some of them permanent.

Many of those groups, including the Associated General Contractors and Associated Builders and Contractors, are supporting the ballot measures as part of a coalition called Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes. Remember, supporting the measures actually means voting “no” on them.

The coalition includes around 50 groups, such as business associations and chambers of commerce.
Measure supporters turned in 129,500 signatures for the personal income tax measure and 126,183 signatures for the corporate tax measure. Each needed 55,179 valid signatures to qualify.

The signatures were submitted Sept. 25. The Secretary of State’s office had until Oct. 25 to verify the signatures and certify the measures for the ballot.

Opponents — those who will vote “yes” on the referendums — didn’t wait for the measures to be certified before diving into the campaign. They released a letter from 36 economists Wednesday calling the Legislature’s tax increases “a prudent course of action,” and claiming that government service cuts would hurt the economy more than tax increases targeted at rich individuals and large companies.

That letter piggybacked on a research report by the nonpartisan Legislative Revenue Office, which concluded that service cuts would hit the economy harder than the tax increases.

The measures already have marked two firsts, Hamilton said: it’s the first time the Secretary of State’s office, and not the individual counties, has verified signatures. It’s also the first time that measure supporters could print their own signature sheets off the Internet and mail them in.

Hamilton said the office didn’t determine how many signatures came in from the Internet forms. They did determine that around 52,000 of the signatures on the corporate tax measure came from paid signature gatherers, with around 71,000 signatures from volunteers, including mail-in individual signatures.

Pat McCormick, spokesman for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, said the number of volunteer signatures shows the grassroots appeal of the campaign.

“This was one of the easiest campaigns to collect signatures on,” McCormick said. “It indicates how strongly people feel about this.”

That also lets measure opponents know where they have to work hardest, said Scott Moore, spokesman for the Defend Oregon Coalition, which is leading the opposition. “What that means for us is that we will be talking to the voters, the 97.5 percent of Oregonians who are either going to benefit from these tax cuts on unemployment benefits or are not going to be affected at all,” Moore said.

The Defend Oregon Coalition has approximately 50 member groups, including unions and issue advocacy organizations.

One influential business group hasn’t lined up on either side, preferring to take a different approach. The Oregon Business Association voted to withhold an endorsement of the measures as its leaders talk with legislators, said Ryan Deckert, president of the association and a former state senator.

The association wants to make the tax increases temporary and more favorable to smaller and medium-sized businesses, Deckert said. The Legislature could make those changes without a public vote, during its midwinter session or at special session.

“They could come in at any time,” Deckert said. “They could come in tomorrow and change this.”